reduce, or rather to obliterate the philosophically untrue; but they are vindictiveness of his nature-it is this truths which if introduced unseasonperpetual gloss, which, by means of ably, and on every occasion, are most the argument of his goodness, is at-liable to be grievously misunderstood tempted to be thrown over the truth and the holiness, and the justice, and the high sovereign state which compose the severity or the awfulness of his character-it is this, in fact, which serves, in practice, to break down the fence between obedience and sin, to nullify all moral government, and so to confound all the distinctions between one part of the moral territory and another; and by tampering, as it does, with the authority of the Divine jurisprudence, to overspread the face of our world with a deep and ruinous security, at the very time, that apart from the restraints of heaven's law, each man is walking in the counsel of his own heart, and in the sight of his own eyes. and misapplied. And we do think that in the act of holding converse with men, for the sake of gaining their compliance with the invitations of the Gospel, the matter on hand is the perfect freedom, and frankness, and sincerity of these invitations--that then it is, when nought should be heard but the voice of welcome and good will, and nothing should be said that might countenance the imagination of an impenetrable barrier between sinners and the mercy seat. However difficult it may be to adjust the metaphysics of the question, there is one thing unquestionable, and that is, an amnesty from heaven, offered without exception to all; a propitiation set forth for the sins of the world, and on it there is not one member of our world's population who has not a warrant to cast the whole burthen;-an alone amnesty to our alienated species of which the record has come down to us, and by which GOD beseeches the guiltiest of men to enter into reconciliation. And, therefore, we would that the representation were often given, of a message that might circulate round the globe, and a sceptre of forgiveness held out in the sight of all its families; and we would not that so much as one individual should be chilled into hopelessness by the dog So much for the mischief that might accrue by looking singly to the goodness of God apart from his sovereignty; but there is also a mischief that will ensue by looking singly to the sovereignty of GOD apart from his goodness. There are certain theologians who have thus erred, and not so much by the views they have given forth of his inviolable sanctity; for no one can state too strongly, or too abso-lutely, his determined recoil from the approaches of moral evil; but rather by the views which they have given forth of such a dread and despotic sovereignty, as to impress the conception of a fatalism that is inexo-mata of a hard or unfeeling theology, rable, of a hopeless necessity, against which all prayer and all performance of man are unavailing. Neither do we hold these theologians chargeable with a positive error, nor in the course of their adventurous speculations on the decrees of GOD, and the bearings which they have on the final destinies of the elect and the reprobate, to have affirmed aught that is doctrinally or or fancying some stern or repulsive interdict against himself, he should feel any arrest in his footsteps on his return to that GOD who waiteth to be gracious. But independent of all lofty speculations, and aside from all the mysteries that attach to the counsels and determinations of a predestining GOD, there is abroad on the spirits of men a certain partial and prevalent impression of severity to which, we believe, much of this world's irreligion is owing. For however strange it is, nevertheless a frequent anomaly of human feeling, that they, who at times can take comfort in sin under such an impression of his goodness as will dispose them to connive at it, have at all times such an over hanging sense of his severity upon them, as never to attain a thorough confi- | dence in his favour. In spite of every illusion their conscience tells them that they are offenders; neither can they get rid of the suspicion that they are not as they ought to be; and they are haunted by a secret jealousy of GOD, whom in spite of themselves, they regard as looking with an eye of jealousy upon them; and just as a man would shut his eyes against a spectacle that pains them, so will they shrink from a contemplation that only serves to put dread and disturbance into their bosoms, and there is an habitual distance kept up between the spirits of all flesh and Him who is the Father of them. There is the feeling of an unsettled controversy betwixt you and GOD; and just as you would rather avoid than encounter the man with whom you are not perfectly at ease, so you have the same motive for shunning all intercourse between your spirit and that of God's. The constant operation of this motive will explain the constancy of alienation from Him who made you. The world is your hiding place from God; it charms you away from the thought of him whom you are glad to forget, and the light of whose countenance would trouble you. Did it shine upon you in such characters of mercy as you could steadfastly behold and rejoice in, your hearts would be ever rising towards GOD; and with the very alacrity with which a man meets his friend. But instead of this, you imagine a displeasure on his countenance, and you are not at ease in his presence; and beholding the severity alone, without the goodness, you feel it more tolerable for to live in the oblivion, rather than in the remembrance of the Deity; and thus in the midst of formal prayers, and every fair and seemly performance, the inner man may be in a state of perpetual exile from Him who is the high and heavenly witness of all its thoughts and all its feelings. This in part accounts for the sluggishness of nature, when called on to stir itself up, that it may lay hold of GOD. There is a sort of frown on his aspect which frightens it away, or lays a check on all its approximations to the upper sanctuary. Our distance from God is allied with our distrust in GOD; and there is a substantial though secret connection, in virtue of which it is, that the soul keeps habitually away from him, just because the soul is habitually afraid of him. It may appear a mystery, yet to the patient and profound discerner of our nature-(though this, perhaps, is rather a subject for close contemplation in your own solitudes, than here in church) I say it may appear a mystery, yet, to the patient and profound discerner of our nature, we are persuaded it will not appear a contradiction, should the same man both occasionally take comfort to himself, when under the thought of the indulgent goodness on the part of God, and yet habitually stand at a suspicious and mistrustful distance from him, under the thought of his unrelenting severity. It is our very distance from God that sheds a dimness over his character and ways, over his wrath against disobedience, as well as over the gentler and kindlier attributes of his nature. Altogether, it is to man, at best, a shadowy contemplation; and so imagination finds a certain pliancy in the materials which compose it. Whatever is dimly seen, can more readily and easily be disguised by the gloss, which, to serve a purpose, may at any time be thrown over it; and thus to quell the remorse and terror of guilt, the severity of God may for a moment be put out of sight, even though this be the aspect in which we most habitually regard him. Thus it is that man takes his stand at a place of distance and obscurity, where, on the one hand, he might so fancy to himself a goodness in GOD, as might yield enough of toleration for sin, and, on the other hand, might save himself from all the disturbance which he else would feel on too near an approach to his severity and his sacred ness. Nevertheless, there is both a goodness and a severity; and this brings me to the second head of my discourse, under which I propose to point your attention TO THE WAY IN WHICH THESE TWO views of the GODHEAD ARE SO UNITED IN THE GOSPEL OF Jesus Christ, as to form onE FULL AND CONSISTENT REPRESENTATION OF IT. First, then, there is a severity. He who is thoroughly read in Scripture will perceive, in the whole tone of it, that there is a severity-there is a law that will not be trampled on -there is a lawgiver that will not be insulted-there is a throne of high jurisprudence that is guarded and upheld by all the securities of truth and justice and there is a voice of authority that issues therefrom, of which we are told, that heaven and earth shall pass away, cre any one of its words can pass away. In the economy of that moral government under which we exist, there is no letting down of the judgment against it. The face of GOD is unchangeably set against evil; and either the evil must be sanctified into that which is good, or be wholly swept away. There is no toleration with GOD for the impure or the unholy; and it were a violence to his nature did iniquity pass without punishment, or without an expiation. There may be some mysterious conveyance and access found for his goodness to the sinner; but toward the sin there is nought in the breast of the Godhead save the most unrelenting warfare. With sin he can descend to no weak or unworthy connivance; and sitting, as he does, in lofty and unapproachable sacredness, he cannot deal with the guilty, but in that way by which his justice shall be vindicated, and his law magnified and made honourable. In this respect, then, there is a steadfastness of principle, if I may be allowed the expression, which runs throughout the divine administration, and from which the just being who presides over it will never deign to recede or to falter. In the whole of his ways we cannot light upon a single instance of God so falling back from the severity of his denunciations against sin, as at all to soften the expression of his hatred and hostility towards it: not at the fall, when the transgression of our first parents was followed up by a curse that has burthened the earth and all its families for many generations: not at the flood, which rained down from heaven to wash away a wickedness from the face of our globe that heaven could no longer tolerate: not at the promulgation of the law on Mount Sinai, where the loud and lofty challenge of obedience was made in the hearing of the people, and the smoke, and the thunder, and the voice gave demonstration of an authority which it were death to violate: not at the entrance of Israel into the promised land, when GOD, to avouch the truth and the terror of his judgment, gave forth his edict utterly to exterminate the sinful sanctuary, by what we witness of that recoil either in our own bosoms or in that of our fellow sinners upon this lower world. Now if we measure Gop by ourselves, we should have little fear indeed of vengeance and severity from his band; for, save when there is gross and monstrous delinquency, we can bear very well, both with our own transgressions and those of others, even although these transgressions should bespeak an utter alienation of the heart from GOD. We should never think the worse, (almost always at least) we should never think with indignant severity of an acquaintance, merely because he was a stranger to prayer, for example, and destitute of piety; and if we measure GoD by ourselves, we shall imagine the same indulgence on his part to that which we do not look upon as particularly sinful, and which we do not regard with those indignant feelings that we do those violations of justice, and equity, and nations that were before them, and so the old and the middle aged, and the little ones were destroyed: not in the subsequent dealings of many centuries with his own perverse and stiff-necked children, to whom he sent famine, and pestilence, and captivity as the ministers of his vengeance, and against whom all his prophecies of evil were followed up by a sure and tremendous fulfilment: and, lastly, not at that terrible period when the Jewish economy was at length swept away, and even the tears of a compassionate Saviour did not avert the approaching overthrow, but who, while he wept over the doom which he would not recall, gave a most expressive exhibition, that along with the goodness, there was also a severity with GOD. In all this there is an admonition to us, on whom the latter ends of the world have come; and as we witness, through the periods of its past history, how awful have been the threats of heaven against the impenitent, and how unfailing the exe-honour, and truth, which we see becution of them, let us beware of laying any flattering unction on our Own souls, and be very sure that, on all the ungodliness of the present generation, the denounced judgment and the denounced vengeance are coming even though that judgment should be held amid the elements of dissolving nature, and that vengeance should be the ruin of a wretched and undone population. There is an immense mass of practical delusion on this subject; and the greater delusion is, that we estimate God by ourselves-his antipathy to sin by our own slight and careless imagination of him-the strength of his displeasure against moral evil, only by the language and nearly extinct moral sensibilities of our own heart. We bring down heaven to the standard of earth, and measure the force of recoil from sin in the upper tween man and man in society. For it so happens that while there be some rare atrocities of character among the few, which awaken the horror and the vivid indignation of the many, there is a habit of ungodliness nearly with all, for which there is amongst them all the utmost mutual complacency and toleration. No man would ever think of vehemently denouncing another, just because he thought little of GOD, and the whole habit of his soul was that of estrangement from the things of faith and eternity: he can view him with easy toleration notwitstanding. The delusion is that God looks down upon earth with the same complacency from above, that he is looked upon by the men of this kindred and genial companionship. This is adverted to by the Psalmist, (and indeed, the more thoroughly and intimately are we acquainted with "Behold the severity of GOD." I am perfectly aware of many, who look upon such language, and such representations as these, to be too strong for the guilt and the turpitude of that enormity wherewith mankind is chargeable, yet the majority of our world are all unsuspicious of having aught so foul and enormous about them. They can see, and be impressed by it, as a great moral delinquency, when a son bears either a scowl on his countenance, or indiffer the Scriptures, the more are we apprized of their profound discrimination and insight into all the mysteries of the human character) this is adverted to by the Psalmist, and from him we learn that what is so venial in our eyes, the mere forgetfulness of GOD, and for which there is such an entire sufferance here, that towards this there is the utmost severity there. The quotation is, "Thou thoughtest I was altogether such an one as thyself: but I will reprove thee, and set them in order before thine eyes. Now con-ence in his bosom towards his earthly sider this, ye that forget GOD, lest I tear you in pieces, and there be none to deliver." The men of the world are not at all alive, therefore, to the real dangers of their present condition; for such is the alliance between our understandings and our hearts, that men can often succeed in believing to be true what they wish to be true; and so there is a very wide and prevalent impression among men, that there is just the very disposition to tolerate our infirmities in heaven, which we feel we have need of, and have a demand for upon earth. There is thus a very general security in the midst of ungodliness, no dread whatever of a coming wrath, just because they have done nothing to incur the detestation of the world. The use of hell is conceived to be as a receptacle for the outcasts of society; and, therefore, they have nothing to fear, if they have not sunk down to the crime, and to the atrocity, and the moral hardihood of outcasts. The Psalmist hath again said, that "the nations which forget GoD shall be turned into hell." And not therefore to you who are disgraced by profligacy, but even to you who are busied with the occupations of this world, and live in a state of total and practical unconcern about another, would we address the language of our text, and ask you to father; and they will even readily admit, that no constrained obedience can atone for the disaffection of a heart evidently in a state of hostility and revolt against the parent who gave him birth; or even should there be no positive hostility, yet should the heart be in a state of indifference only (the indifference you will observe, of a child to that parent who tended him from infancy to manhood, and who now feels it the sorest agony of nature, that he should have brought up a family who simply do not care for him) this neglect merely, though there should be no hatred, is enough of itself to fasten the imputation of every foul deformity on him who is chargeable therewith. Yes, we are capable of feeling the most vivid indignation when an earthly parent is thus robbed of that moral property which belongs to him in the love and loyalty of his own offspring; and how then can you miss the more emphatic application of a principle the very same in kind, though perhaps far more intense in degree to our Father who is in heaven? What do you think we ask of that great human family, who have cast off the allegiance of their hearts towards him, and turned every one of them his own way? Do you call it nothing that this stray planet of ours should be burthened with a race sunk in |